Mohammad Saba’aneh sends Christmas greetings from Palestine

Palestinian cartoonist, and friend of Mondoweiss, Mohammad Saba’aneh, sent us these cartoons this morning with a message of Merry Christmas and “Here now it is so sad, no one celebrate”. Currently, he is working on a comics storyboard about Jerusalem. You can buy Mohammad’s book White and Black: Political Cartoons from Palestine here from Just World Books.

…Trump made a big mistake. He said that Jerusalem is for one religion. For the Jewish people. But Jerusalem is not just for one religion. It is for Muslims and Christians as well.

“Trying to cancel our existence and our connection with the city is very dangerous because it is mixing religion with politics.”

Like many Palestinians this Christmas, Giacaman is feeling very weary. “Palestinians are tired. It is clear since the second intifada that the Oslo peace accords have been a failure and we should dissolve the Palestinian Authority. Since the beginning it has always been clear that the United States has been on the side of Israel.

“All Trump has done is put that on table in plain sight rather than under the table. Nothing has changed apart from that. And we, as Christian Palestinians, have been victims of these policies for years.””

And the Christian Zionists could care less! They preach and sin at the same time.

Thank you, Mohammad and Annie. I wish both of you the best.

btw, did you happen to hear/read the Archbishop of Canterbury’s and the Pope’s Christmas messages?

“Archbishop of Canterbury criticises ‘populist’ world leaders

Justin Welby joins Pope Francis in using traditional Christmas Day message to make oblique criticism of Donald Trump over Jerusalem decision

The archbishop of Canterbury has spoken out against “tyrannical and populist” world leaders in a Christmas message likely to be seen partly as a rebuke against US president Donald Trump.

Justin Welby was preaching at Canterbury cathedral at the same time as Pope Francis made oblique criticism of Trump in his traditional Christmas address in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

The pontiff made particular reference to the situation in the Middle East just two weeks after the US president inflamed tensions in the region by controversially recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In Canterbury, Welby told worshippers that much could be learnt from the nativity story, where Jesus is “power seen in humility”.

He said: “In 2017, we have seen around the world tyrannical leaders that enslave their peoples, populist leaders that deceive them, corrupt leaders that rob them, even simply democratic, well-intentioned leaders of many parties and countries who are normal, fallible human beings.” …”

Trump has been showing so much ignorance, verbal violent threats, and physical ones as well, to be imposed on whatever country that is not bending over backwards to please that Exceptional Empire named the United $tates of Aggre$$$ion, exceptional especially in the sense that historians recently named IT the most murderous empire in all humankind.

What an idiot! To the point that he doesn’t care at all about the stupidities in his writings, speeches, threats, verbal, physical and military, besides his pride as a groping expert…, who’s getting away with it as an untouchable US president.

I’m pretty sure his promise for his US Jerusalem Ambassy is going to bring him lots of $$$$$$! Deposited in some secret special account in some special country practicing that kind of special banking secrecy. Strange though that the Panama Papers didn’t list any US oligarchs and politicians, famous or not. Only Putin was the crooked one!!! That game is so obvious now. Public Ignorance won’t be bliss forever in the US of A.

I appreciate the sentiment of the cartoons, but the IDF is mostly fairly young guys and gals (That’s part of the problem.) These guys are too old and have some exaggerated Semitic facial features that I do not like seeing used on either Jews or Arabs because they bring to mind certain exaggerated stereotypes that were used by anti-Semites back in the 30s.
For me, this makes the cartoons much less effective in conveying the intended message.

J Lewis, are you capable of getting out of your own preconceptions and trying to understand what Mohammad is trying to convey? A good idea to try to do this, because he actually lives under the heel of the occupation and has a highly developed and nuanced theory of the esthetics of representation. In several of the talks he gave when he was here in the US last spring he explained that, unlike some other Palestinian cartoonists, he *does* want to represent the faces (and therefore the essential humanity) of the Israeli occupation soldiers; but he does so in a way that shows how *the situation of occupation makes everyone involved in it extremely ugly.* In case you hadn’t noticed, in his art, the Palestinians living under occupation all look very sad, tired, old, and even ugly– even the children.

As for noses, he’s definitely an equal-opportunity proboscis-magnifier when he sees the artistic need to be! (Check out the size of Santa’s nose in one of these images– also, the size of the noses of the “Arab leaders” and various even Palestinian leaders, in his art.)

As for some of the armed Israeli security personnel being “gals”, I leave to you to figure how offensive and inappropriate in every single possible way that term is…. Like those armed female Israeli military who filmed themselves humiliating Palestinian men at checkpoints and then posted it all to Facebook: they’re just “gals being gals”??

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